Calen hadn't slipped a horseshoe in two weeks, but he could feel something ugly crawling under the skin of the town, restless as a fever. The forge's heat pressed on him like a fist, slicking his knuckles with sweat even as his lungs rasped in the cold. Above, in the thatched blackness of the roof, the rafters creaked like bones. Every day, more villagers came in with stories: a hunter mauled by his own hounds; a merchant wandering the causeway, gnawing at the splinters jammed under his nails; an infant refusing milk, then biting clean through her mother's thumb.
He worked the bellows harder, scattering sparks over the hard-packed earth. The ring of hammer on anvil was steadier than his heartbeat. It was only when the metallic echo faded that the noises of the world rattled back in: the distant, thumping groans from the healer's hut, the crows hagg.
ling in the gutters, something twitching in the straw as if even the vermin had been made strange. Calen let the horseshoe cool in the trough, watching the water hiss and roil, its steam thick with the scent of iron and old blood. He saw his own hands reflected on the surface, the nails rimed dark, the flesh webbing into callus, and for a moment he could not recall if he had washed them that morning, or if he had simply begun the day as he always did—with a shriek of the rooster and the taste of copper in his mouth.
He set the horseshoe in the row with the others, all identical, waiting for feet that might never come. Across the lane, the baker's wife was dragging a sack of flour through the mud, her children trailing after her like ducklings, each with a cloth tied around their mouths. Calen almost called out to her, to ask how the boy was faring after the fever, but the words stuck. She shot him a look sharp enough to spark flint—no greeting, not even the brittle civility of weeks past. She hoisted her load and vanished into the fog pooling at the door.
Calen flexed his fingers. The dread that had been gathering in his chest for days now came to a boil, scalding and sour. He wiped his hands on his apron and stepped outside. The square was empty, save for the hunched figure of Old Bent, the tanner, shuffling after a chicken with a rock in each hand. He was humming tunelessly, eyes fixed on the bird as it darted and skittered. The chicken's wing dragged at an ugly angle, and with a quick, practiced motion, Bent brought the stone down. The sound was louder than it should have been. The bird fluttered, then lay still. Bent didn't react—just dropped to his knees and began to tear at it with his bare hands, ignoring the feathers stuck in his beard and the bright flecks streaking his face. Calen looked away. He wasn't afraid, not exactly, but the rawness of it—the hunger, the lunatic focus—made his teeth hurt.
He turned up the lane, letting the fog swallow him. Maybe he'd visit the apothecary, see if the old woman had a tincture for this creeping malaise. Or maybe he'd just keep walking, follow the river out past the mill and not return until the sun had burned everything clean. The thought was tempting. But the village was his, in a way it had never been anyone else's, and even as the sickness gnawed at it, Calen felt something like pity or duty catch behind his ribs..
A movement at the edge of his vision—two children, faces smeared with soot, peering at him from behind the cooper's barrel. He waved a hand, hoping for a smile, but thechildren only stared, eyes wide and wet as if they'd been crying for days. He thought to ask their names, but their feet were already skittering away, swallowed by the mist and the uneven clatter of their clogs. Calen watched them go, the echo of their flight leaving him lonelier than before. He felt the world tilting off its axis, the familiar lanes and faces shown up as brittle masks, barely holding back something old and hungry. He realized, as he turned up his collar and pressed on toward the apothecary, that not even the fire of his forge could sweat this sickness out of him. It was in the walls, the water, the marrow of every living thing..